I’m on the look for two devices, or even two in one if easyly possible. I want to track and steer a drone.
So one device should send out a strong signal, that you can easyly track by triangling it and one that can sent the locationdata back to the flightcomputer. GPS sadly is no solution for this, because it is to slow an too imprecise.
As I’m new to the field of communications, I’d love to hear some tips and aadvices from everybodey having experience, or an idea at all, which device could be the best solution for me or if there is an even easyer or better way.
Safe steering of a drone - other than say resetting a destination or way point or updating a pre-programmed flight path would likely require too many ‘downlink’ messages to be viable for use over a network. Also if ‘steering’ required for say collision avoidance and reactive emergency adjustments then the latency also likely too long unless running as a class C device on an enabled network…IMHO…you need to rather look as a direct point to point comms solution…
Tracking (an uplink process) on the other hand is an option provided you work within local regulatory limits wrt duty cycle and also have regard for any chosen networks FUP. Note: banging up against a duty cycle limit should be an extreme exception and infrequent situation only vs standard operating procedure as clearly ‘antisocial’ wrt other users of the available spectrum!
If GPS is too slow, forget about LoRaWAN. You might want to look into LoRa.
LoRaWAN is not suited for real-time communications. Even when disregarding duty cycle limits, LoRaWAN allows for at most a transmission once every 1 second due to the protocol used. (Class C nodes still have an RX1 window, figure 65 in the 1.1 spec suggests a new uplink can only be scheduled after RX1 closes)
As for tracking a lost drone: beware that the distance that LoRa can cover when the device is on the ground, is much less than for a device that’s up in the air. Also note that tracking probably needs a GPS anyway; see Location by triangulation.
